1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of communications, and in particular, to a system and method for enabling a fixed cellular terminal (FCT) to activate appropriate landline parameters automatically.
2. Description of Related Art
Cellular telephone (or, more broadly, wireless) systems provide an attractive alternative to conventional wire-based (e.g., landline) telephone systems, especially in connection with the provision of new or expanded telephone service in heavily populated or remote areas where significant increases in demand are or have been encountered. The expense, aggravation, and time involved in acquiring rights of way and establishing the infrastructure to provide telephone service are substantially reduced with the installation and use of a cellular telephone system. However, the mobility advantage of cellular telephone systems, which is accounted for in the increased subscriber cost of the service, is often a feature that many telephone service users do not want to pay for or necessarily need.
Accordingly, efforts have been made to couple wireless systems with conventional analog telephones (e.g., those 2-wire phones used for providing Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)) and to provide a hybrid telephone system wherein hybrid telephone devices are fixed at certain locations as in a wire-based system but instead provide telephone service using radio frequency communications in a wireless environment. Such systems, conventionally referred to as fixed cellular systems, interface a conventional POTS telephone, like those used in wire-based telephone systems, with a radio frequency transceiver, like those used in mobile stations (MSs) operating within wireless systems. The primary advantages of fixed cellular systems are (i) the reduction of the costs and hassles of acquiring rights of way and of laying or stringing telephone cables and (ii) the ease and swiftness with which the system may be installed and made operational. The availability of a fixed cellular system thus offers service providers a tool for quickly reacting to increases in demand at a reasonable provider and subscriber expense.
Conventional FCTs, however, increase costs for service providers because significant time and expense are invested into programming each FCT for interfacing with the POTS telephones of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that is associated with a given geographical area in which the FCT will be physically located. Each PSTN around the world defines a set or collection of parameters governing how a standard POTS telephone connects to and operates within the PSTN. Such a set or partial set of parameters can be termed a line interface (LI) protocol (LIP) that each POTS telephone incorporates to accommodate the particular country and/or network in which the POTS telephone will be used. With conventional FCTs, each FCT undergoes an expensive customization process in which the appropriate LIP is programmed either at the factory or at the premises of the customer. It would be beneficial for both manufacturers and service providers if the expenses of the aforementioned customization process could be reduced or eliminated.